Friday 3 February 2012

Chearsley Planning Forum

The 2nd meeting of the Chearsley Planning Forum will be held in the Village Hall on Monday 6 February at 7.30pm.

Those of you that attended the first meeting in November will recall that we agreed to get through four pieces of planning activity in order to ensure that the people of our village have a say in the way things develop here.

These were:
  1. Decide if we want to be an A, B, C or D type village.  The meeting suggested, and the Parish Council agreed, that ‘C’ is for us, and we told AVDC that in December.  Done.
  2. Answer some follow-up questions posed by AVDC.  We carried out the survey in December to get answers to those questions and the results were sent to AVDC after the January PC meeting.  Done.
  3. Develop a Parish Plan.  We agreed to do that during 2012.  That’s the bit we need to start now.
  4. Develop a Neighbourhood Plan – perhaps.  That’s for the future
So – we agreed to have a Parish (or Village) Plan.  The question now is what do we want it to look like and how are we going to get it organised.  That’s what I would like discuss on Monday.

The survey questions and results give us a bit of a starting point, and there are various other sources that could provide examples of plans from elsewhere.  But I suspect that we will be able between us to decide for ourselves what we want to see in the Chearsley Village Plan and suggest that to start with at least we see what ideas we have of our own.  It’s our Plan, and we can put in it whatever we think is right for our village.

I am sending this to all those who signed up at the first meeting as willing to contribute to the Planning Forum.  Please make every effort to come to this meeting, and please try also to think in advance and come prepared with ideas on what you think could or should be in the plan.  No idea too trivial, too big or too way-out at this stage. 

I am also sending it to those that completed the survey but are not signed up for the Forum, on the basis that you also might be interested in contributing to this effort even though you missed the first meeting.

Finally, if any of you have a lap-top that you could bring along and would be willing to help capture information on the night that could well be very useful. 

I look forward to seeing you all for an evening of lively discussion.

John Lewis